


Fatal Error

by The Black Sluggard (Hazgarn)



Series: Null Operators [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Dark Character, Drug Use, Gen, Goodneighbor, Grief/Mourning, Lynching, Minor Character Death, Murder, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon, Revenge, Supernatural Elements, Synths, Vampires, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 02:11:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21291923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazgarn/pseuds/The%20Black%20Sluggard
Summary: A man arrived in Scollay Square one autumn evening. He was chasing a ghost story—the sort usually told with a drink in front of a fire on a cold night. A story about visions of blood and a warning unheeded, an omen of death for a town now abandoned. But he didn't come all this way just for a cheap thrill over a drink. He came looking for a reason, and he wasn't going to stop until he found what he was looking for.(A Null Operators prequel featuring Goodneighbor before it was Goodneighbor, Murphy before she was 'Mama' and a certain nameless somebody back when he was nobody at all.)
Relationships: Barbara/Deacon (Fallout)
Series: Null Operators [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1534886
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Spook Me Ficathon 2019





	Fatal Error

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Spook_Me](https://spook-me.dreamwidth.org/15675.html) 2019.

_2239, the Commonwealth_

It was almost sunset by the time Leonard stumbled his way up to the gates at the entrance of Scollay Square. There was a rough-looking ghoul on the barricade who gave him a glaring once-over, clearly weighing his appearance against the sorts of people the enforcers here generally expected to see on their doorstep. As it was, Leonard was numbly surprised to receive a quick nod gesturing him inside. Though as the gate slid open, the door creaking ominously as it scraped across the broken pavement to let him inside, he had to suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise after all. This makeshift colony of exiles and criminals had seen more than its share of desperate men.

Desperation aside, Leonard knew he didn't belong here, and he was sure the people who _did_ could recognize it easily. He ignored the stares he was getting, trying not to call attention to how out of place he was or otherwise be seen to gawk like some pre-War tourist. He kept his head down and his hand locked tightly on the strap of his backpack as he let the momentum of the crowd guide him, doing his level best to remain aware of the people milling around him. He warily avoided eye-contact with the cluster of armed Triggermen gathered at the door of the Old State House, and kept as much distance as he could from the intimidating red gaze of the Assaultron stationed in front of one shattered storefront on the opposite side of the street. Best to keep to himself as much as he could. Stay just the single night, find who he was looking for, and leave once he found what he needed.

He quietly hoped that the information he had was accurate, and that finding what he came here for wouldn't force him to stay any longer than overnight.

Before long he had found his way through the cramped streets to the old pre-War metro that harbored the general population of the benighted neighborhood. It took him a few moments to adjust to the darkness, sparsely lit here and there with precariously balanced candles and the rare oil lamp. The smell inside took longer to get used to—even over the more common odor of densely packed bodies, the cigarette smoke and the smell of jet fumes left him momentarily light-headed.

As dark and as tightly packed as it was he never would have expected the task of spotting her to be an easy one, but his eyes were immediately drawn to a sleeping bag pressed against a far wall that was given an unexpectedly wide berth. The space had drawn his attention, but it was the woman who kept it. She sat propped against the wall smoking a cigarette, legs thrown out loosely in front of her. Her confidence within the small territory she'd lay claim to was no doubt reinforced by the battered rifle resting within easy reach across her lap, but looking more closely one only saw more reason for it. The splintered wooden stock of the gun was held together by a screwed-on plate of scrap metal, and judging from the stains it had likely seen just as much use as a bludgeon as it had as a firearm. Neither the leather vest she wore nor the tattered t-shirt beneath it left any of her solidly-muscled arms to the imagination, and the necklace of spent shells glinting at her neck was more than just a pretty decoration—it was a warning.

Leonard wouldn't have wanted to wind up on the bad side of either end of that rifle, but he was going to have to risk it. He was almost certain this woman was the one he was looking for.

As he approached her—slowly—Leonard saw a few of the details which matched the description he had been given, and a few more that he hadn't been given at all. She was in perhaps her mid-thirties, but there were broad streaks of early silver in her light brown hair already making their march towards grey. Despite this, as he had noted earlier there was no mistaking her vitality, and the alert blue eyes that scanned the room caught sight of him well before it could have been obvious he was headed toward her. When he finally reached the edge of her claim she acknowledged him with a slight nod.

"Evenin'," she greeted, her words spilling smoke as she gazed at him speculatively. "Saw you lookin' around when you came in...but you stopped lookin' when you found me. There something' I can help you with, pal?"

Leonard steeled himself, opening his mouth with the hope the words he was about to say weren't going to get him killed.

"Are you the one they call the Madwoman?" he asked.

Much to his relief her reaction was a snort of cigarette smoke and a laugh that was far more good-natured than the setting or the question would have had him expect.

"Only the ones that can't keep up with me," she said. "The rest call me Mae Murphy."

"Then you're who I'm looking for, Ms. Murphy."

"Am I?" Her head tilted back briefly, her lips twisting slightly as her assessment turned more pointed. "You wouldn't be after that price old Tommy Hooks put on my head, would you? Honestly didn't think anyone was stupid enough to trust in Hooks or his grudge money anymore."

The question caught Leonard off guard and for a startled moment he could only stare at her, dumbfounded.

"Do I look like a bounty hunter?" was what he eventually managed.

And it had been commented to him on more than one occasion that Leonard wasn't the most expressive sort. In this case, surprise leeched his tone so effectively of anything that one would be hard pressed to say he even sounded surprised. Murphy's response was another smoke-filled breath of laughter through her nose.

"Nah, not really," she admitted with a shrug and a lazy smile, "but I've made the mistake of making assumptions before. And you made it in the front door, didn't ya?"

Leonard wasn't entirely sure what to say to that.

"Look, I'll make this simple for you," she finally said after too long an uncertain silence on his part. "You came lookin' for me. What was it you were hopin' to find?"

He hesitated, but only briefly.

"I have...questions," he said finally.

He kept it vague. He knew some of the rumors about Murphy—what some people believed about her, or at least believed she believed about herself. She wasn't a woman he thought would be swayed easily by flattery, but if letting her believe he had come all this way chasing after the impossible helped get him in the door then he could allow her to continue to think so a little bit longer.

Murphy let out a thoughtful hum.

"You wouldn't be the first, for sure," she said, seeming to consider a moment. "Tell you what. You got caps?"

She didn't ask the question with particular volume, but having the topic floated in mixed company still made him rather nervous, and he couldn't help but cast a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one was paying them more attention than his unusual presence warranted.

"I have..._some_," he answered reluctantly.

"Take me over to the Rexford and treat me to a drink that won't leave me blind," she said. "Do that an' you can talk my ear off for as long as my lips stay wet. Anythin' else we might have to negotiate, but I can't say a price for sure until I know what I'll need to help you with what you're lookin' for. Sound fair?"

"Alright," he said.

He wasn't sure if it was precisely as fair as she seemed to believe, but it was almost certainly as fair as he was likely to get.

Leonard waited patiently as Murphy rolled up her belongings in her sleeping bag, tying it tight with a frayed length of cord to sling over her shoulder. He filed that detail away, knowing that if a woman of her clear capabilities couldn't trust to leave her belongings out of sight down here, he had best keep his own close at hand during his stay. The Hotel Rexford made for a noisy beacon as they passed along the still-crowded streets. The two Triggermen on watch out front offered them a sneer as they approached the door, and Leonard imagined that if the leaner of the two still had one his nose would be wrinkled in disgust. From the way both sets of eyes watched them, Leonard wasn't actually sure who between them was the subject of greater disdain.

"No hand-outs," the ghoul grunted as they passed through the door, "and no more mischief, Murphy. They still ain't got the stains out of the rug from the last time. Cause anymore trouble and you're set to be made an example of, got it?"

Murphy raised her hands as if the man's weapon had been pointed at her.

"Hey now, that whole mess with Gemma and Brick wasn't really _my _fault," she said, her smile broad and genuine and somehow impenetrable, as if she would still have worn it even if she _were_ at gunpoint. "I just told her what he was up to with her brother. Sure as hell didn't tell her to blow his head off for it and ruin everyone's night. I learned my lesson: no more fortunes for the locals, not from Murphy. But this guy ain't a local. Doubt whatever answers he's here to dig up are gonna ruffle anyone's feathers."

"Better not," he groused, "or it's gonna be _your _brains Claire's left scrubbin' out of the rug."

"And you better be able to pay this time," his companion insisted. "With _caps_."

Murphy waved them off brazenly and threw an arm around Leonard's shoulders, pushing him a little to urge him inside.

The inside of the Rexford was a stark contrast to the gloomy depths of the metro. Though still crowded it was brightly lit with strings of electric lights hung from the dark chandelier overhead, and scratchy music played from an ancient radio in the corner. A few people were dancing, while others crowded around the bar set along one of the walls. The sounds of loud conversation, of harsh laughter drifted from the backroom behind the counter.

Despite the festive atmosphere, it felt no less dangerous here than it had in the dark, crowded tunnel he had just left. On the contrary. The instinct of the hunted was to take refuge in the anonymity of numbers—in extra eyes watching your back as they watched their own, and the chance that if danger came it just _wouldn't be you_ that it came for. Safety was in the dark corners, in the quiet places where no one who was worth anything would ever bother to be. He knew these facts quite intimately, and he could easily recognized the opposite where it was true...

In a world like this, the only ones comfortable enough to enjoy the light were the predators.

Leonard almost jumped when Murphy's hand tightened slightly on his arm. He was sure that she noticed, but she didn't comment, leading him towards the bar.

"I can tell this ain't your scene," she said. "If you want we can take our drinks up there."

He followed her eyes up to a balcony on the floor above them.

"I-" He realized suddenly how tense he was. With her arm across his shoulders she had more than likely felt it. "Yes. _Please_."

Murphy did the talking at the bar and Leonard found himself shuffling out caps for two drinks. He felt ill at ease at just the thought of dulling his senses in a place like this, but it would have only drawn more attention if he didn't. Then Murphy led him up the stairs. It was quieter on the landing, everyone else either enjoying the noise downstairs or upstairs making noise of their own. They settled into a pair of unoccupied chairs, Murphy sprawling out loosely while Leonard held his beer in front of him like he was set to defend himself with a weapon he didn't quite trust. He watched her savor a long, slow sip of the whiskey in her glass as she sat back with a faint smile.

"First part of the deal is done," she said, "and I'm a woman of my word. Tell me what you're lookin' for, and I'll see if I can't do my best to help."

Leonard picked at the faded label on the bottle in his hands as he considered his words a moment. He decided it was best to get straight to business.

"Have you ever been to a settlement up north called Danversport?" he asked.

He looked up and saw her watching him over her drink, a stillness creeping into her posture that wasn't there before. A wary surprise, he thought—and it occurred to him that, charlatan or not, she likely wasn't a woman who was easily surprised. Whatever it was she had been expecting him to say, it certainly hadn't been that.

"There ain't no settlement in Danversport," she finally said.

Her voice steady but subdued now from the warm tone he had already grown used to.

"No, not anymore," Leonard conceded. "Not for a couple of years now, from what I heard when I passed through Salem."

She set down her drink on the battered table between them and pulled a cigarette from the pocket of her vest. She lit it, taking a slow draw before she met his eyes again.

"They tellin' ghost stories up there already?"

Her mouth pulled in a crooked grin as she spoke, a show of humor he doubted she actually felt.

"A few," he said. "Most say it was probably ferals from the state the bodies were found in."

Leonard paused for a moment, taking the time to gauge her unease before continuing more slowly.

"But not everybody buys that," he said. "Ferals wouldn't have left the bodies to rot in the sun practically untouched. But the town wasn't looted, so it wasn't raiders that did it either. And neither would have left the children asleep in their beds to find their parents' bodies in the morning."

Murphy took a small sip from her drink with a faint hum.

"And the ghost stories," she prodded quietly. "What do those say happened?"

"If you buy someone a drink on a quiet enough night," Leonard said, "a few people will tell you that it was some kind of Institute experiment that went amok up there."

She let out a faint snort.

"And," he continued, "if you ask the right man, he'll even tell you about the waster all strung out on chems who led the surviving children into Salem. A woman telling wild stories about murder and revenge and a red-eyed monster that came in the night."

He paused again, a question in his mind. He knew the answer, but he was curious what she would tell him anyway.

"Is that why they call you mad?" he asked.

Another snort sent smoke through her nostrils, her mouth pulling into an amused expression, though he would nonetheless be hard pressed to call it a smile.

"Oh, there's a lot of reasons they call me that, honey," Murphy said, flicking the ash from her cigarette. "But I got the feelin' you ain't interested in any of that. You're here after the story I told them up in Salem."

He hadn't thought he had made any secret of his interests, truly, but he gave a small nod nonetheless.

She downed the rest of her drink and held her open hand out to him. It took him a moment to interpret the gesture, but finally he surrendered the bottle in his hand.

"Alright, then," she said. "I'll tell you what happened up in Danversport if you'd like. And you can believe me about it or not, I don't care, 'cause it's the only story I got."

It seemed to Leonard as if she expected him to argue, yet he felt her attitude in this was more than fair all things considered. It was the story he had come for, after all. Even if it turned out to be nothing he could use, ridiculing her for it after all the trouble he had taken to coax it out of her would be profoundly ungracious, at the very least, if not far more profoundly _foolish_ given how far outclassed he would be if she chose to take violent offense at the slight.

He said nothing, but gave her another slow nod, this time in acknowledgment. It seemed enough for Murphy, or at least enough to relax her into talking. Though even then it took her a moment to collect herself and settle into the telling of it, taking her time wiping the mouth of the bottle clean even though Leonard had never really touched it.

"It was about two years ago, I think, give or take," she finally began. "Maybe only two or three months after a bit of mess that happened back in my old home town, way down in South Boston. Little misunderstandin' between me and this piece of garbage raider named Tommy Hooks—I think I mentioned him earlier. But keepin' away from all the goons that came sniffin' after that bounty forced me quite a ways farther north than I was used to. For all the good it even did me. Some opportunistic asshole spotted me when I was passin' through Salem and followed me out of town. And, well... Let's just say he got a lot closer to collectin' Tommy's money than I usually like to admit."

There was a faint smile on her face, not entirely an unpleasant one but...rueful, certainly, Leonard thought.

"Now as far as it came down to me and him," she continued, "I came out on top, but I wasn't in the greatest shape. We'd both taken a fall down this rocky hill in a struggle over his gun—which I got, but not without payin' the price for it, let me tell you. Dislocated my damned shoulder and my left leg was busted somewhere above the knee. I had some stims on me, but with a break like that you're not doin' yourself any favors if you don't get it set right first. After finishin' him off with his own rifle I was left all but draggin' my way across the wasteland in search of a town. And it just happened that Danversport was the first one I came across, and lucky enough to have a small clinic and a doctor actually worth the name, at that."

She paused, thoughtfully it seemed, taking a drag and flicking the ash from her cigarette. She breathed out smoke in something that was half a laugh, though entirely mirthless.

"Lucky for me, anyway," she amended quietly. "Though I guess, come to think of it, maybe not for the rest of the town in the end."

Another huff of a laugh escaped her and she shook her head.

"She was...honestly an odd little thing," Murphy said. "You know, the quirky sort of odd that often leaves you questioning sometimes if you really understood just what it was they said. And she was...kind in the way you don't see every day. The soft-seeming sort of kindness that makes you look at the world and wonder that it ever saw fit to let her keep it. But the sort of kindness that, if you're paying attention, you realize isn't really soft at all. The sort of kindness that it takes a strength most of us will never know to hold onto. Good at her job, too, and surprisingly strong. Nothin' soft there at all. No way to go through gettin' my leg re-broken and set and ever come away thinking she was anythin' like weak or squeamish."

She took a drink of the beer she had commandeered from him, sitting forward with a faint smile.

"She was pretty, too," she said. "I remember thinkin' about making a pass from the clinic bed once or twice while I was there mendin' up. But she had a man, back at her home..."

Murphy trailed off, releasing a faint breath.

"She was odd, but he was...somethin' else entirely, her man," Murphy said. "I...never really knew what it was about him except that somethin' wasn't right. Nothin' special about him I could see, just this pale, gangly red-head, but he felt...off, and I could never put my finger on it. He came into the clinic a few times, though only after dark, and even at night he wore dark glasses over his eyes. The doc said it was because he had some condition that made him sensitive to light. He spent most of his time occupied with their farm on the edge of town, but he liked to come in and visit when she couldn't get away from her patients at night."

She sighed, a release of tension Leonard thought.

"Anyway, I was set to be there about a week until she was sure my leg healed up," she said. "An' I didn't have much in the way of caps, but we'd worked somethin' out in the way of work to pay it back once I was back on my feet. But when the sickness came through with a trader from down south I wound up havin' to get out of the bed a bit early to help her out with takin' care of the locals."

She grimaced faintly, and he saw her thumb find the loose edge of the bottle's label that he had been worrying at earlier.

"It was rough," she said. "Aches and about the nastiest fever. But I'd lived most of my life farther south, so I'd probably had whatever it was at least once before. At least, that's what the doc had to say about why I wasn't hit so hard when just about the whole town was on their knees from it."

She looked at him then, pointedly, as if trying to assure his attention.

"But that was where the trouble started, you see," she said. "_Everyone _in town took sick...all except for the doc and her man."

She fell silent a moment, and he thought at first she was merely punctuating this beat in the story, so it took perhaps longer than it otherwise might have for him to realize she was looking for something from him. Some reaction or response of some kind.

"I...suppose it was fortunate that the doctor hadn't gotten sick," he mustered finally, uncertain if it was exactly what she wanted. "So that she could still take care of the town."

From her blink he thought it was probably not what she had expected, but she sighed and went on.

"Sure," she said. "It was pretty good luck, if you look at it like that. Not that the townsfolk did. Course I wasn't to know why right away. It wasn't that bad to start, you see. It was only after they lost a couple of kids that the whispers started up. That was when I heard from the locals about the man that had come through a few months before all this lookin' for a woman who sounded an awful lot like the doc. Some real rough, hard-assed lookin' guy with a shaved head and a scar on his face. Merc type from the sound of it, but with a couple of guys at his back that just made everyone...uneasy."

"I...see," Leonard said, absently.

And he said nothing more than that, barely having meant to say it at all. But he certainly did see. Perhaps more than even Murphy knew.

"The folks in town kept their mouths shut at the time, of course," she continued. "They weren't about to lose their sawbones if they could help it. But none of them forgot. So when the fever swept through, and she didn't get sick even spending all her time working with the sick, people started thinking about it again. And when they lost those first few kids, people were angry. And they started lookin' for someone to blame..."

"First there were the whispers about the man who came looking for her," Murphy said. "Then there were whispers about what happened in Diamond City those years back. About the man with the wires in his head that killed all those people. And they began to wonder if maybe the doc and her man were more than they seemed. Whether, maybe the illness itself wasn't just a normal illness at all..."

"They thought the Institute was behind it," Leonard said.

It wasn't a question—it wasn't even a guess, truly. It had seemed an unfortunately inevitable conclusion for the sort of logic Murphy's story was following. Still, she nodded, as though it had needed the confirmation.

"Now, I still wasn't in the best shape," Murphy reminded him. "I wasn't supposed to be on my feet yet, ideally, but I was stuck helpin' the doc with the clinic during the day. Stims had knit the bone together right enough, but it was still finishing up with healing, and after a day of that it'd be hurtin' me somethin' fierce. And one night after a day of helpin' her out, along with the ache I got this...itch. It just happens that way sometimes. I get this naggin' feeling of what's...needed. What'll make all the pieces fit together just right. And with my leg hurtin' like it was, that little whisper that was tellin' me to snag myself a needle of Med-X was awful hard to ignore."

Her eyes flitted to his face, perhaps seeking judgment in them. Perhaps looking for the disbelief she had clearly expected at the start of her tale. Leonard did his best to keep his face free of it. The disbelief was there, but he could afford to wait and judge her credibility until after her story was done. He said nothing, and eventually Murphy's scrutiny subsided and she continued.

"I was floatin' on that for a bit," she said, "before I heard voices outside the clinic. It seemed important so I hauled myself out of bed to see what it was about. It was just getting dark, and the doc was out there on the steps with her man. And a whole bunch of the townsfolk were there too, gathered all around makin' some kind of fuss. I never did find out what they were talkin' about, though I can guess. But I never got a chance to hear, because from the moment I laid eyes on them all I could see or think about was the blood."

"Blood?" Leonard asked, confused at the sudden turn. "Someone was bleeding?"

But Murphy shook her head.

"No one that I could see," she said. "But there was blood on all their hands. On their clothes. On their faces. And not dried blood, but these bright streaks and grasping hand prints, red and fresh and wet as if someone had just died reaching for them. It was on all of the people that had come to the door, every one of them. And the doc's man, he was just...covered from head to foot, almost like he'd been swimmin' in it..."

Murphy let out a shaky breath and Leonard certainly couldn't blame her. As hardened a woman as she was, experiencing hallucinations like that must still have been quite frightening.

"Not her, though," Murphy continued quietly. "Not the doc. Not her. Not a single drop or a smudge or a stain, even where I saw her man touch her. She was...clean."

And Leonard wasn't particularly versed in psychology or dream symbolism or whatever this was, but it seemed clear to him what Murphy at least was trying to say.

"You think she was innocent," he ventured quietly.

Murphy gave him a faint smile, a wry but oddly empty sort of expression.

"Oh, I'm sure she probably was," Murphy said. "Though it would turn out they were right about her, in a way. The mess they wound up making later, it was easy enough to see the bits that wouldn't have been there if she were human..."

The smile had turned into something of a grimace, and her voice had turned into something harsh in a way that even her hardness of spirit had left him ill prepared for.

"And they might have been right about him, as far as it went," she said. "I don't think he was human either. But they were also wrong. And they didn't listen. None of them listened. Not when I warned them about the blood, and not later, when they caught her out alone the next morning. She must have begged for her life... But they didn't listen."

Her cigarette had burned down to the filter at some point, half-forgotten. Noting this she breathed a faint snort. She flicked it off into one of the room's shadowed corners and leaned forward to set her beer on the table between them.

"They were right about him, but they were wrong," she said, fumbling around for the pack of cigarettes in her pocket to shake out another. "They were wrong, and they didn't listen, and they paid for it in blood."

"What was he?" Leonard asked with a frown. "If he wasn't a synth like she was. What was he?"

And he may have been mistaken in asking—or at least in his wording—for he thought he saw her own expression shift. He supposed he had misstepped slightly in a sense, let his curiosity get the better of him. Most people in the Commonwealth would have hesitated or spoken around it, perhaps refused to speak the word above a whisper even where no one would overhear. If she had misgivings about his question, however, she chose not to voice them. Perhaps she even respected his bluntness. It wasn't as if they both didn't know what they were talking about.

As for an answer, she shook her head.

"I don't know," she said. "But I'd never seen or heard of eyes like that before—not on a man. And not since either."

"His eyes?"

She didn't answer right away, and there was an odd intensity to her expression. He thought she was seeing it again, right there. Perhaps she needed to see it all again in her mind—to scrutinize the details she remembered—before she could give him an answer.

"I wasn't there when they cornered her the next afternoon," Murphy said finally, pushing forward. "I only saw what they did later when she'd been gone too long and I went lookin'. And after I found her like that I didn't think it was best to stick around too much longer. So I started gettin' my kit ready to go. Took some bottled water and some food, some chems in case I needed them to keep on my feet, and the little pipe pistol the doc was supposed to keep on her for protection. Figured I'd just keep quiet until it was dark and get out. Try to avoid any more trouble with the locals."

She paused and shook her head again.

"I didn't manage to make it out, though," she said, "not before I heard the first screams. And they started over near where they got her. So I'd guessed it might be him, that he might've done somethin' stupid out of grief, but more than feelin' bad for him I didn't think much of it. But they didn't stop, and then there were gunshots, and more screams... They got so loud, and then they started coming...closer to the clinic, and I knew I had to get out of there right away."

Her hand shook slightly as she brought the cigarette to her lips, breathing the smoke out slowly.

"You ever had the bad fortune of seeing the way a feral's eyes look in the dark?" Murphy asked him suddenly. "Or a dog or a cat, sure, but ferals...there's somethin' in their eyes that does it too, and on somethin' that looks so human it just isn't...right. I thought that was what he was, at first. Easy thing to mistake in the dark—just a bright eyed shadow, crouched over the bodies. But I saw right away this was different. The light in those eyes was too red, too _bright_. And he wasn't a ghoul, of course. Didn't move like one, didn't look a thing like one otherwise once he stood up and passed through a patch of dim light from the little bulbs they used to keep the streets lit at night. I almost didn't recognize him without his sunglasses on."

"It was him, then?" Leonard asked. "The man who lived with the doctor? He's the one that killed them?"

Murphy nodded.

"He was covered in blood," she said, "though it wasn't quite like the Sight'd showed me. It was all over his face, painted thick around his mouth and his chin, and the front of his shirt was just soaked through with it. And one of the town guards found him while I watched, so I got to see just how he'd got that way..."

She shook her head slowly.

"The guard got a shot off," she said, "and it hit, I know it did, but it didn't even seem to matter to him. And the guard never got off a second. I've seen ferals tear into someone before, and it's nothin' pretty to look at, but I never knew how much worse it could be with somethin' that looked like it was still human. He just bit in and the guard fought him at first, but then he just...stopped. Couldn't have been dead just yet, but his hands went still and he just...he stopped fightin' back and let it happen. He just let that...whatever he was drink him dry like a bloodbug on a penned up brahmin."

Murphy lapsed silent a moment, leaning forward to grab the bottle she had set on the table.

She was visibly shaken by the recollection, and inwardly Leonard took the opportunity to examine her claims. It didn't sound...impossible, however far fetched it seemed on the surface. It certainly could have been shock—whether on Murphy's part, her fear on that night exaggerating the memory, or the guard losing the ability to fight from severe enough trauma. And he had heard plenty of stories about what a raider cranked up on enough chems was capable of, ignoring the pain of fatal wounds long past what a person would normally be able to endure. And he thought it likely the eye-shine in ferals was actually caused by a type of ocular cancer that wasn't particularly uncommon out in the wastes. It would have accounted for the man's sensitivity to light.

(And there were other ways for a man to reach beyond the limits of what was humanly possible. Leonard knew better than to discount them entirely.)

So it wasn't impossible, no, there were plenty of explanations to be had. Despite her reputation and admitted chem abuse, Murphy was a much more credible witness than he had truly been expecting.

"And then?" Leonard asked.

His voice sounded somewhat loud in that moment, even to himself, and she looked at him rather abruptly. Not as if startled, or even as if she had forgotten him, but more as if slightly baffled by the question for some reason. Or perhaps as if he was baffling to her somehow. He wondered for an anxious moment if perhaps she had expected a more horrified reaction from him as she relayed the details. If that were the case...

Well, it was something he might need to keep in mind for the future, but he honestly wasn't the squeamish type either.

"You got away from there, clearly," he prompted her, trying to move past it, "and from what they said in Salem you weren't alone. How did you get away from Danversport with the children without him seeing you?"

Murphy blinked, and then her mouth turned up in a crooked expression.

"Oh, honey," she breathed quietly, hoarsely, shaking her head, "I didn't. I _didn't_."

She tipped back the bottle in her hands, quickly downing its dregs before tossing it rather noisily into a nearby bin.

"He saw me," Murphy said. "He saw me right after he let that man's body fall. Maybe I let out a noise when that happened, maybe I didn't, but he saw me, and he was on me before I even had a chance to think about the gun in my hand. Had me up against the wall of the clinic and-"

Her jaw tightened a moment and she looked at him suddenly.

"I ain't a weak woman," Murphy said. "Understand that ain't me makin' excuses for myself, or puttin' a judgment on others, it's just a simple fact. I been in a lot of fights. Once took a raider's head nearly off his shoulders with a sharpened piece of metal in just one swing. I know how strong I am. And I know what a strong man looks like, too, you get an eye for it from sizin' people up for a scrap. So understand what I mean when I say I ain't weak, and that a man built like him shouldn't be able to get me in a hold I can't try and shake out of. It wasn't a normal kind of strength, what he had. Couldn't pry his hands off me any more than I could've arm-wrestled a behemoth. And...shit. Don't matter if ten years go by or twenty—those red eyes, starin' into mine, the blood on his breath—that ain't nothin' I'm ever gonna be able to forget."

She shook her head and took a slow drag from her cigarette, blowing out smoke with a shudder.

"Anyway, I had that pistol in my hand," she said, "and when I couldn't pull myself free I stuck it right in his face. Don't know if it would've done much, but I didn't have to pull the trigger. Pretty sure he recognized that gun a lot better than he did me. But it made him take a second look, I think. And I think he _must_'ve remembered the warnings I gave all of 'em the day before, it's the only thing I can figure, 'cause he looked down at himself—at the blood on his hands and on his face and his clothes. And he opened his mouth, like he was maybe gonna say somethin', but I never did get the chance to know what. 'Cause we both heard another sound then..."

Murphy let out a breath and rubbed her eyes.

"It was a wailin' from down the street a ways, back the direction he'd come from," she said quietly. "One of the little ones had finally come out now the gunshots were mostly quiet and found her folks dead in the dirt. He froze still at the sound—still the way I've only seen in the dead, but he was standin' up. And then as suddenly as he was on me he'd let me go..."

She paused turning away from her watch of the smoke from her cigarette to stare Leonard straight in the eye.

"And then I fell right on my ass," she said, without blinking. "My legs were wrecked after that—might've been even if they were both whole—and I whited out on the pain for a bit. When I'd pushed through it he was gone. But I could still hear the kid cryin' down the street. So once I drug myself up off the ground, I went to see if she was alright. She was about...seven or eight, I think. Old enough to listen and to mind when there was trouble. Told her to hold my hand while I checked to see if there was anyone left alive...figured if there was, seein' her might get them to ask questions before they put a bullet in me."

"Were there any other survivors?" Leonard asked.

Murphy hummed quietly and waved her hand in a so-so gesture.

"There were the other kids," she said, "but other than that just the folks that were laid up in the clinic. He hadn't touched it. Maybe it was out of respect for her. Maybe he just hadn't got the chance, I don't know. Most of 'em weren't in any shape to get out of their beds, though, and little chance of me gettin' any of them out of there myself. So...I took the kids with me, just in case, shot myself up with the chems I'd need to muscle through, and we set out for Salem to bring help. All but a few of those sick folks wound up dyin' from their fevers anyway, though, and the ones who didn't never did see what got the rest."

She blew out a tired breath, scrubbing a hand through her hair.

"Anyway, that's the story you bargained for," Murphy said to him. "Figure it was worth the caps you paid?"

Leonard considered the question, weighing the answers he might give.

"I believe you saw what you say you did," he said. "It confirmed a lot of what they told me up in Salem, and gave me some context for what happened that they couldn't give me. I really couldn't ask for more than that."

He was disappointed not to have found all the answers in her story that he was hoping for, but there wasn't much to be done about that.

Leonard's eyes had drifted down to the floor for a moment, so he was somewhat startled when he looked up to find Murphy's eyes on him, narrowed as she examined him. He felt the familiar squirming fear he usually did under close scrutiny, and it wasn't eased as she let out a thoughtful hum, leaning in her chair to place her chin in her hand.

"You ain't just been askin' out of some curiosity," Murphy mused at him quietly, her eyes sharp and considering. "You're out here lookin' for somethin', and it don't end with me, does it?"

Leonard fought against his nervousness and allowed himself a very faint and somewhat rueful smile.

"It might," he told her quietly. "You were the last lead I had."

She sat back in her chair as the realization struck.

"Shit," she breathed, "you're lookin' for _him_."

Her eyes were wide, her expression so nakedly disarmed that it struck him as almost helpless. Leonard supposed he was right in his earlier assessment. Murphy wasn't a woman who was used to being surprised, and in this instance she seemed at a loss for what to do with it. She sat staring at him for a long stretch of dumbstruck silence, shaken in a way that seemed only to grow more urgent the longer Leonard failed to deny it.

"_Why?_" she asked him finally, the shock at last having released her long enough to form the question. "Why would you go lookin' for a man like that?"

"It's...something that has to be between me and him," Leonard said, "if I ever find him. I'm sorry."

And he was grateful for her story—truly, for giving him the consideration of listening to him at all—but this wasn't something Leonard could afford to entrust to her. Even beyond the risk to his own safety there was far too much at stake.

"_Listen_," she said, leaning forward. The word was a low whisper that was almost a hiss. "If you got some kind of score to settle about what happened up in Danversport... I wouldn't, pal. If you take nothin' else from my story, take this advice. Revenge is a fool's move, and it's just mad to think about tryin' to win it from somethin' like him..."

"It's not about revenge," Leonard said to her. "Not the way you think."

When that failed to ease her apparent distress for him he tried a different tack.

"There are words that I need to say to him," Leonard said. "That's all."

Murphy released a breath and ran a hand over her face. When she looked at him again she shook her head, offering him a baffled and somewhat wan smile.

"Well," she said. "You're some strange kind of fearless, aren't you?"

_Fearless_, she said. It was so absurd that Leonard couldn't help himself, he let out a nervous laugh.

"Just the opposite," Leonard told her, the barest ghost of a smile on his lips. "I have...so many things to be afraid of already. What's one more?"

Leonard began to regret his words from the moment they left his lips. It was a dangerous impulse, laying himself open like that, even for a moment. In the wrong time and place it could easily cost him his life. And exposing his vulnerabilities certainly wouldn't help ease whatever worries Murphy seemed to have developed on his behalf.

He sighed and stood. He had what he came for. The trail ended here. It was time for him to move on.

"Look, I," he began uncertainly. "Thank you. For your time. The story. Many wouldn't have bothered, and I-"

He cut himself off before he could fumble any further.

"Thank you," he said again, and took his leave.

He pushed his way carefully through the gathering in the lobby, ignoring with stiffened shoulders the jeers of the few people he failed to avoid running into. He ignored entirely the taunting of the ghoul on the door as he left, and the laugh of the man's companion at whatever words he had said. His mind was turning over the problem of how to lose himself in the crowd for the night when she caught up with him outside the old metro.

"Wait!"

Leonard turned as she reached him. And he swallowed his unease as she set a hand on his shoulder, enough not to flinch as she leaned in close.

"Look," Murphy said, her voice low, "it ain't somethin' I normally do these days unless someone's come askin' for it first, but... I've got that itch again tonight. So just once I'll be the one to make you the offer. Give me the caps for a spike of Psycho and...I'll see if I can't help you find him."

Leonard eyed her hand first before nervously meeting her gaze. There was some of her frantic concern from before, but also a solid determination that caught him off guard. Leonard wasn't quite sure what he was meant to do with either. But it was the worry that made it's way past his hesitance first. In spite of his better judgment, he couldn't help but feel touched by the concern she showed for him having truly only just met him, not when so very few people in his short life ever had. And maybe she really was just a junkie angling for a free fix, but there was something pleading in her eyes that somehow cut through the skepticism he held regarding Murphy's reputation and her claims, _just _enough...

Why not indulge her if it might ease her mind?

"Alright," Leonard said slowly, "but where-"

"I know who to talk to for the stuff," Murphy said, "and I can run the folks loitering in the metro shitter out of there long enough to give us the space to do this in private."

Leonard had no choice but to defer to her expertise, not really. And so he very shortly found himself sitting on the chipped tiles in the ancient subway restrooms watching with a squirming discomfort as Murphy eased the heavy and complex hypodermic apparatus full of stimulants into her veins. Her eyes were closed but she soon let out a grunt and he saw her mouth pull into a broad, almost manic grin.

"Yeah, there we go," she said, letting the spent needle fall to the ground.

She held her hands in front of her on her knees, tightening them into fists until they shook and then letting them go lax again. She did this several times, her eyes still closed, and it seemed to Leonard almost as if she was trying to find a rhythm. It couldn't have been her pulse—he could see it from where he sat, the vein in her throat pounding rapidly, visible to the naked eye as her blood pressure climbed. Her face was flushed red and her breathing was shallow and swift, and Leonard began to regret humoring her. The symptoms were...concerning, to say the least.

He was just about to ask what the settlement at Scollay Square had in the way of a doctor when her voice broke him from his rushing thoughts.

"I can feel him," she said. "His grief..."

Her voice was...unsettling in a way he couldn't easily define at first. The words were...slow, measured in a way that seemed violently at odds with the over-amped state of her body.

"I feel his rage," she said, then let out a gasp. She swayed slightly where she sat, her eyebrows drawing together briefly. "His..._hunger_. And I see..."

And her eyes opened finally—wide, glassy and bloodshot—and Leonard could see that her pupils had shrunken down to pinpoints almost lost within the pale blue sea of her irises. Her gaze roamed as she spoke, but if she saw anything at all it wasn't the room in which they sat.

"He's somewhere...to the west," Murphy told him slowly. "Beyond the river. There's a crossroads that hangs in the sky. In its shadow there's an overgrown cemetery. Time's swallowed up most of what was there long ago. But there's still an old tomb, looted and empty, that sits all by itself, with no company but the crumbling statue outside. That's where he is...hiding where the dead once slept 'cause he feels it's where he belongs."

She drew in a shuddering breath and clutched at her chest, and for a moment Leonard was afraid it was the chems she had taken. But when she spoke again her voice was hoarse, and he could see the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

"He's lost," she said, "and so...empty. All formless and frayed at the edges, like an old shirt torn apart at the seams. He's waiting for someone to find him. Mend him. Give him shape again."

And suddenly Murphy reached out, grabbing Leonard by the arm of his jacket to pull him forward.

"You'll be walkin' into your own tomb if you ain't careful," she said to him, her words more rapid and urgent now. Her eyes were on his face, yet somehow still unseeing. "He ain't gonna want to listen to what you have to say. You'll need to give him a reason to."

She lifted her free hand and pressed one calloused fingertip hard against the center of his forehead. Leonard tried to pull away, but she held him tight and her grip was strong.

"When he's about to take your life," she said, "offer him the piece of yourself you keep hidden instead. And he'll repay your truth with a lifetime of lies—all you could ever ask for."

Leonard was shaken—by her actions, and by her words and what they implied—yet he finally found it within himself somewhere to shove her away. This time her fingers came loose from his sleeve and she sat forward with a groan, face cradled in both of her hands.

"Oof," she said, letting out a huff of breath as she kneaded her thumbs against her temples. "That one was rougher than I'm used to. Though I guess I should'a known it wouldn't be easy. Not for somethin' like him..."

She took a few more slow breaths before she lifted her head, digging around in the pack at her side to draw out a small battered tin. She shook it idly as she looked at him, taking in what he thought must be his own rather...ruffled appearance and offered an apologetic wince.

"Sorry," she said as she shook a small tablet out of the tin, swallowing it dry. "I usually ain't so handsy...I think there was a warnin' in there? It's...gettin' fuzzy on me already. Psycho's like that. The Sight's sharp while it's in charge, but it's like havin' a brahmin stampede through your head. Hard to miss, but it don't always leave everything where it's easy to find."

"I...see," he said.

It was the best he could manage that was at all diplomatic, afraid that if he said anything else that it might rouse the chemicals in her system into...honestly he wasn't sure what. Perhaps that fear was unreasonable, but he had reached the point in his dealings with Murphy where he no longer knew what to expect.

Was he to believe her? It seemed...implausible. Her ramblings had hinted at knowledge he hadn't shared with her, but there were certainly other ways to explain that. He hadn't known her long, but it was easy to see that Murphy was sharper than she truly let on—and she had never pretended she was stupid to begin with. Had he let her see too much? It was possible. Maybe she had seen it, picking it up in bits and pieces while she told her story, piecing it together into this...performance. It was a disheartening thought, and one that he realized inspired not a small amount of anger—at Murphy, certainly, but at himself as well.

But he couldn't be certain that was the case. Her 'predictions' were just vague enough to obscure not only how much she knew about his business, but whether she actually knew anything at all. Had she truly deciphered his secrets, or had she only assumed that he had secrets to keep?

Perhaps he had stayed silent too long, because Murphy gave him another worried look. She dropped her hand on his shoulder once again. In spite of his current misgivings he withstood the urge to shake her hand away, but it was a very near thing.

"Now c'mon," she said, sticking the tin back into her bag. "Let's go downstairs. I'll take back my corner and you can rest easy for the night. Even with the 'tats to level me out I ain't gonna be able to sleep with this rush goin', and ain't nobody gonna be dumb enough to bother ol' Murphy when she's ridin' a Psycho high either. You'll be safe as a Vaultie in their bed."

Leonard wouldn't be sleeping either—certainly not in this place, and not with so much uncertainty still swimming at the forefront of his mind. Yet he was sure her offer of protection was entirely genuine, at least, even if nothing else was. It would have been foolish of him not to accept.

"Thank you," he said.

He would spend most of the night trying to decide whether or not he meant it.

Leonard rose early the next morning—as early as it could plausibly be considered morning, if he was honest. He left Murphy to the restless, half-aware doze she had fallen into without a word and stepped from the dull chill of the metro into the biting cold of a pre-dawn autumn morning. The streets of Scollay Square were probably about as empty as they ever were, any of its residents who could do so having no doubt abandoned them hours ago in order to escape the weather. Frost had come to rime the filthy soil that poked out from under the broken pavement, and the unnameable puddles of fluid that gathered in many of the larger gaps was edged with a paper-thin sheet of ice.

It was going to be a long journey ahead of him, wherever he was headed next. He hadn't quite managed to decide during the night. His options were few, and even the most promising of those options gave him pause. As much as he hated to admit it, now that the trail had gone cold his best chance of finding it again lived in Diamond City. He knew of Valentine, of course, and his reputation for finding the people that someone had decided shouldn't be found. Not those the Institute had taken, of course—those were far beyond anyone's help—but everything from fugitives and runaways to unfortunates kidnapped by slavers. If anyone in the Commonwealth could help him find the man he was looking for, certainly it was Nick Valentine.

Yet something about the whole thing made him uneasy, and it wasn't the same uneasiness others voiced when it came to Diamond City's resident detective and his unusual existence. Leonard found it baffling to contemplate how a settlement as unwelcoming as Diamond City could have grown to tolerate the synth living in their midst—especially one that sounded like a Gen 2 from its description. And there was no way the Institute didn't know he was there. Perhaps he was simply being paranoid—perhaps the detective was allowed to carry on as he did because the Institute just no longer had a use for him. Or perhaps Nick Valentine persisted in Diamond City because it was exactly where the Institute wanted him. And if there were even the remotest possibility that Valentine remained measurably under the Institute's sway or its surveillance Leonard simply couldn't take the risk.

He couldn't afford to trust the unit's placement in Diamond City anymore than he trusted Diamond City itself.

But if not Diamond City then where? Before he had let himself get detoured by the strange account from Salem, Leonard had been hard at work tracking rumors of Institute interference. His most recent search had focused largely on sightings of the man with the scar—the Institute's hunting dog if _those _rumors were to be believed. His presence had been confirmed in Salem at least, but with Danversport a ghost town there were no new leads where that hunt was concerned either. That dead-end had allowed him to justify pursuing this new angle on what had happened in Danversport. The _red-eyed man_. An Institute experiment, the folks in Salem had believed. It was possible—there was far more to the Institute's activities than the synths the people of the Commonwealth feared so greatly—but from the details he knew that hypothesis didn't fit quite right. Particularly if the doctor in Danversport truly had been who Leonard suspected her to be...

Leonard pushed it from his mind. He had made a mistake letting himself get distracted. He had allowed sentiment to get the better of him, clearly, if he had given in to the folly of lending wastelander superstition any credence. He could admit to himself now that he had known from the start that chasing ghosts—chasing _ghost stories_—was never going to deliver anything he and his colleagues could use in the end.

And yet-

And yet, as he stood before the gates at Scollay Square, Leonard found himself running all those details over in his mind once again. He thought about the synth who had died in Danversport—kind and brilliant and now just another victim of human cruelty. He thought about the man from Murphy's accounts. In his mind's eye Leonard could almost see him. A man with red eyes, drenched in the blood of the people of Danversport. The image loomed in his mind, almost mythical, like something out of an Old World religious text—an angel of vengeance, come to judge them for the wickedness of their hate and ignorance.

And all for the sake of a synth...which Leonard thought was perhaps the most fantastical part of all.

As Leonard waited impatiently while the gate creaked its way open, he looked up at the vanishing stars and released a slow breath that fogged and fanned away, fading like a ghost into the early morning air. Fading like the impossible visions of dreams were said to fade upon waking.

He was almost beyond the gate when he stopped suddenly in his tracks. He felt his hand tighten on the strap of his backpack, the other balling itself into a fist where he had hidden it away in his pocket. Drawing in another breath to steady himself, Leonard turned to the ghoul who was guarding the gate and he asked:

"Have you ever heard of a crossroads in the sky?"

The ghoul frowned at him at first—confused, Leonard thought, though he had always found their expressions so very hard to read—but then he blinked suddenly and gave a snort.

"Eh, sure," the ghoul told him. "Back before the War there were overpasses running all over the place. Most of 'em fell down ages ago, but last time I crossed the Charles the old Mass Pike interchange was still standing. Don't know if it still is, though."

Leonard's breath caught.

"That's out west?"

"Uh, yeah," the ghoul said slowly. "Hey, you okay?"

"I- Fine," Leonard mumbled in a rush. "I'm- I'm fine. I- Thank you!"

And when Leonard set off with the sunrise at his back it was with a light step, ready just this once to take a chance on miracles...

It took Leonard most of the morning to make it to Diamond City safely, and from there locating the remains of the ancient turnpike was as easy as asking the nearest security guard. They warned him about the countryside out west. The bridge crossing the Charles River had fallen down decades ago, and the areas along its banks were crawling with mirelurks. The other side of the river was raider territory—where it wasn't overrun with feral ghouls—and the struggling forestland out that way was known to harbor nastier wildlife than the mongrels and other vermin that thrived in the heart of Boston. They gave him advice for finding a crossing—and most of it was "Don't go", but Leonard thanked them for it anyway. In the end he took a route one of the guards said traders swore by: skirting south along the shore of the reservoir to the west and then following the remains of the old rail line north until he found the crossing with a road whose bridge was still intact.

Of course, even the easiest route was far from easy.

The bridge was narrow and crowded with rusting cars, just the sort of place where ferals liked to sleep during the day. Leonard took it slowly, careful and quiet, and mostly his crossing went without incident. Though at one point he disturbed a feral who made a grab for his ankle from beneath an old sedan. A shot to the back of the head stopped it before it was able to take a bite out of his calf, but the noise quickly roused its brethren from their torpor. Leonard had been forced to run, detouring south along the river a ways until he happened upon a leaking boat that had grounded itself upon a sandbar in the shallows of the river. He hid out a few hours, waiting for the ghouls to give up their pursuit, before he was able to try and find his way back to the shattered ruins of the turnpike.

It was late afternoon by the time Leonard finally reached the interchange. Though it had loomed large on the horizon long before his crossing of the river it was only up close that he realized just how broad an area was encompassed by the shadow evoked in Murphy's vision. Its gargantuan form hung overhead like a storm-cloud, shrouding a broad stretch of the countryside in a premature twilight. Yet up top the fading sunlight cast long shadows, and even from below the signs of habitation could be seen. The silhouettes of several shacks were visible, perched along the edge of the interchange and stretching on for most of its length, and smoke from more than one fire drifted up from within their midst.

Raider country, the guards from Diamond City had warned him. Raider country, and apparently the man he followed had seen fit to hide himself right under the nose of the largest stronghold Leonard had ever seen.

For the first time since leaving Scollay Square, Leonard began to truly regret his choice to come out here. While he hesitated to classify his endeavor as hopeless just yet, of the options he could see in front of him none were particularly good. Searching for the tomb in the dark would be difficult, and he would run the risk of stumbling upon dangers he couldn't see. He had a lantern in his pack, but lighting it for his search would make him a beacon in the darkness too easily seen by any eyes watching from the overpass. Waiting until daylight was a possibility—if he was careful and was mindful of the sightlines he might avoid being noticed—but first he would need to find a place he could pass the night. And he would have to do it soon, before he lost the last bit of daylight he had.

Or he could give up, he reminded himself. He could turn back. He could find his way back to the old boat up the shoreline and head back to Diamond City in the morning. He could forget about all of this, or he could take a chance on Valentine perhaps, and at least return with back up...

(_No_, a part of him insisted firmly. _No_. He had come too far already. At least out here on his own he was only risking his life.)

Unfortunately, Leonard's deliberation was soon cut short by the sound of a dog barking to the north, followed by a voice raised in the distance. It couldn't have been very far away. And he realized suddenly that the raiders must have look-outs at ground level as well.

He needed to get some distance. There was a chance the dog hadn't caught his scent just yet. There was also the chance that if it had that the raider following it wouldn't have the patience to pursue him for very long.

Leonard kept his head low as he passed between the sparse trees beneath the aging overpass, making use of their trunks for cover where he could. Only once he had reached the dubious safety of one of the turnpike's massive pillars did he allow himself the chance to look back. He could see the raider now, little more than a shadow in the shade beneath the overpass. They were still more than a dozen yards away, but he could see the dark, low shape of the dog with its head bent eagerly to the ground and he knew it had found his scent.

With his pursuers closing in, Leonard had little choice but to chance a short dash toward the cover of the nearest pillar. For a second he thought he might have avoided drawing the raider's attention. But there was a shout, and he heard the sound of a gunshot, and the flat _crack_ of the bullet as it hit concrete only inches shy of his head.

"Think you can run, asshole?!" the raider shouted, her voice tearing through the still air. "Tear him up!"

The dog let out an eager howl, and Leonard knew he wouldn't stand a chance once it caught him. He had to risk it. He had to _run_.

His heart was already pounding as he launched into a desperate sprint for the cover of the next pillar. His eyes had adjusted well to the dim light beneath the interchange, but still the gloom made it hard to see the obstructions in his path. He shot through the trees in an erratic path, leaping over logs he barely saw and slipping between trunks. He stumbled more than once, only narrowly keeping his footing. But still the dog was gaining, and Leonard doubted that his pipe pistol would cut it. But the choice was taken out of his hands when he made the mistake of looking back. He caught just a glimpse of the dog—and the raider following quickly behind—before his feet caught air and he found himself tumbling down a short, rooted slope into the narrow channel of a muddy riverbed.

Leonard lost only a few seconds to his surprise. He could hear the sounds of the dog charging through the brush toward him, and the eager shouts of its master as she followed. He rolled over quickly, pushing himself up onto his knees in the fetid-smelling mud. He scrambled to retrieve his pipe pistol from the muck where it had landed. His hands were shaking as he readied the gun, the grip slick in his fingers as his eyes rose to the lip of the riverbank above him. Watching, waiting for that first glimpse of his pursuers over the edge of the rise. He would get one shot that they might not see coming, and that shot was really the only chance that he had...

But that shot and that chance never came.

As he waited and listened he heard the sound of pursuit come to a halt, first with a sharp yelp and then with the raider's sudden shout of surprise. He heard her rifle fire, twice, before he heard her scream—a terrified sound that was itself cut off prematurely, ending abruptly with a horrifying gurgle.

Leonard sat, paralyzed, trembling and uncertain in the silence that followed. Half a minute slid past. One minute. Two... The freezing mud was leeching the warmth from his body. Pulling himself slowly from his knees Leonard retrieved his pack from where it had fallen and he slowly, carefully crept toward the edge of the rise. The roots that had snagged his clothing on the way down helped his climb now back to the top—though it was still rather slow going with his gun still clutched tightly in his hand.

As his head cleared the height of the riverbank, Leonard could tell with only a glance that the raider was dead. Her body lay mere feet away from the edge of the riverbed, her limbs laid out haphazardly where she had fallen still upon the ground. The dog was nearby—still alive, Leonard saw, but it was limping and when it saw him it kept its distance, letting out a thin whine. No other threat was in evidence, but Leonard kept his gun ready as he hauled himself up, cautiously moving to inspect the body. The sun had nearly set by now, leaving very little light to speak of, but Leonard could just see the dark smudge of shadow down the front of her armor where blood had spilled out from the wound on her throat.

Leonard knelt down to inspect it more closely. The ragged tear which marred the flesh wasn't very large. At first glance it didn't appear much different than the wounds a feral ghoul would inflict, but none of the flesh appeared to be missing, and the tearing at its edges went surprisingly deep. A quick bit of probing revealed that the attack had more than likely severed the jugular completely, yet beyond the dark spill down her chest there was surprisingly little blood for a wound of its severity, either on the ground or the rest of the body. Leonard recalled Murphy's account—the details that he had written off as shock at the time—and his heart lurched with excitement.

He was so _close_.

The dog had slunk off by the time Leonard finished his examination of the raider's wounds. Working by touch Leonard found her rifle and her ammunition, and then carefully made his way back down into the narrow riverbed. With the walls of the trench to shield him he finally risked lighting his lantern. From there he pushed on, following the damp track of the riverbed as it headed roughly south. The old overpass was still visible against the night sky where its shape obstructed the stars, and he used its massive silhouette to navigate as he made his way. Eventually the course of this track wound its way toward the nearby lake and Leonard was forced to double back, returning to the shadowed stretch of ground that ran beneath the massive ruins. He found a short, stony ridge, using it for cover as he made his way back east toward the broken turnpike.

It was as he followed this ridge that a flash of white caught his eye up ahead. Looking more closely, Leonard could just see the edge of some broad, bright shape standing out starkly as it caught the light of the moon. He thought at first it might be a fallen piece of the ruined freeway overhead, but the material was far paler than the concrete from which the supports of the overpass were built. As Leonard approached it cautiously the rest of the structure rapidly came into view. Soon Leonard found himself standing before a set of white stone stairs, flanked on either side by a pair of rectangular stone columns. The fractured remains of a statue lay on the ground nearby, toppled at some time past, either by men or by the elements, yet otherwise still valiantly holding its shape. And at the top of the stairs stood a small building: a mausoleum built of pale stone, bright and white, all but shining in the silvery moonlight.

Leonard stared, wide-eyed and breathless. _This _was what Murphy had seen in her vision. It _had _to be.

Slowly, Leonard made his way up the steps. No door stood in the doorway, lost to the ages if it had ever been there at all. Instead a dark cloth had been hung in the doorway, shrouding the interior of the tomb from view. With his pistol in one hand and the lantern in the other, Leonard steeled his nerves with a slow breath and then, very carefully, pushed it aside.

He saw right away that the interior of the mausoleum was empty, but signs of its recent habitation were just as easy to see. A ragged sleeping bag, tucked away along the far wall, a small stack of battered books lying on a small crate nearby. A trashcan shoved away in one corner, filled with charred sticks and other bits of half-burned debris, and what looked like a heap of soiled and tattered clothing discarded nearby. The stains were-

"Did you miss the sign in the yard that said 'No Soliciting'?"

Leonard froze at the sound of the voice that spoke up suddenly from behind him. He debated turning around, but with the pistol in his hand he felt that doing so might be read as a threat. The man's words confused him, but perhaps addressing his apparent error would allow them to see through this conversation civilly.

"I didn't see a sign," Leonard said. "It was dark."

The man let out a faint snort.

"Well I didn't think I'd need one out here," he said. He sounded slightly amused, if not just as slightly annoyed. "Apparently I was wrong."

Leonard carefully lowered the gun in his hand to his side and slowly turned back to face the door. A man stood in the doorway, just at the edge of the light from Leonard's lantern. His features were still largely cloaked in shadow, save where the light reflected on his sunglasses, but Leonard could see that he was of average height, if perhaps a bit on the thin side, with shoulder-length hair that fell about his face in a stringy curtain. Leonard lifted the lantern in front of him, hoping for a better look, but the man took a step back. Leonard thought he heard a faint huff of breath and realized that his examination might have cost what little he had of the stranger's patience.

"You're trespassing, scavver," the man said, stepping aside from the doorway. "Time to leave."

Alarmed at the thought of losing his chance Leonard scrambled desperately for something to say.

"I'm not a scavver," he protested shakily. "I- I'm looking for someone."

"No one else around," the man said, gesturing toward the steps with a nod of his head. "I suggest you look somewhere else."

When Leonard failed to move or even respond the man let out another impatient breath, dragging a hand through his messy hair.

"This is no man's land," the man said slowly, watching him. "Nothing but raiders and monsters out here, if there's any real distinction."

"I noticed," Leonard managed quietly.

"It's not the smartest place to go looking for someone is what I'm saying," the man said. "And I doubt anyone who is out here wants to be found."

"But I did find you," Leonard said.

The man's demeanor shifted very suddenly and he stepped back into the doorway, cutting off the exit that until now he had so generously been leaving open. Where before he had given the impression of a man striving for civility despite having fallen long out of practice, now all of his strained amiability was gone.

"Me?" the man asked, his voice low as he took another step toward him. "You were looking for _me_?"

"Y-yes," Leonard answered nervously.

The gun was still in his hand, but at this range he doubted he would be able to lift it quickly enough to use it if things went wrong—if it would even matter. Leonard felt more security from the lantern he held between them than he did the pistol at his side, and even that was as thin as smoke. And as Leonard searched his mind frantically for the right words and came up with nothing, he resigned himself to what he knew was the wrong thing to say instead.

"Have you ever heard of a settlement up north called Danversp-"

Leonard never even saw the man move before he found himself on his back on the ground, his head screaming from the impact against the concrete floor of the mausoleum and his assailant crouching over him. The hand clutching his throat was ice cold—as cold as the stone of the tomb itself—and in his daze he felt the gun pulled free from his grasp. The glass chimney of his lantern had cracked, but by some miracle it hadn't shattered. Though it guttered briefly the flame still flickered, finally casting the man's gaunt features into light. His face was angular with a narrow chin dusted with stubble, his pallid skin was filthy and peppered with faded freckles. Looking up Leonard saw only his own eyes, bulging in fright, reflected back in the stranger's sunglasses.

"Figured I was doing my good deed for the day pulling that raider off your back," the man said, leaning forward to speak the words lowly into his ear like a whisper, "but now I'm having second thoughts..."

This close, Leonard couldn't help but smell the blood—the raider's blood—carried on the stranger's breath. He could see the red stains painting the front of his filthy clothes—no doubt the reason he had shied away from the light and Leonard's scrutiny at the start. And perhaps Murphy had failed to notice the detail herself, or perhaps she had left it out of her account intentionally afraid of being disbelieved, but as the man spoke Leonard caught a glimpse of his teeth—bright and white and far sharper than they had any right to be. The man's other hand moved up to the side of Leonard's jaw, shoving his face to the side.

"I'd like to hear one good goddamned reason why I shouldn't make you dessert," he said.

Leonard drew in a shaking breath and closed his eyes. Murphy's words were in his thoughts, but that didn't make it easy. He could only say this now, when there was literally nothing more that he could possibly lose...

"My designation is C2-51," Leonard choked out against the vice constricting his throat. "And I think I knew your wife."

The grip of that hand tightened slightly, and Leonard felt more than he saw the man lean back, as if to take a better look at the prey in his grasp. A long look, apparently, for the silence in the tomb drew out for what seemed to Leonard like an age before the man finally spoke.

"You're a synth," he said.

His voice was quiet—barely more than a whisper—and oddly uninflected. Leonard knew that it wasn't a question, but he was less certain whether it was an accusation.

"And you are...what you are," Leonard said, his own voice just as soft.

The man loosened his grip on Leonard's throat at last, sitting back on his heels to watch him. His hand rose slowly and lifted the sunglasses from his face. Leonard looked up into the strange, unnatural red light shining back at him. And truly Leonard hadn't the slightest clue what this man was, save that he wasn't normal—wasn't human—but apparently just having that knowledge and having the courage to meet his eyes in spite of it meant something.

"And you still came all the way out here?" the man asked him slowly, clearly baffled at the thought. "_Why_?"

And Leonard still didn't know if he should trust this man—this creature, whatever he was—just yet. There were many unanswered questions, but the answers Leonard did have certainly didn't cast him in the most flattering of lights. He was a murderer, certainly, perhaps some manner of cannibal. He had attacked Leonard on little provocation. And yet mention of the woman—the synth—that they both knew had apparently stayed his hand.

For now Leonard didn't dare risk telling him about the others—his colleagues in this fight—not just yet. Their plans were still too fragile, their mission too important. Their goal of saving his brothers and sisters, of winning them free of their enslavement to the men and women that created them, felt on most days too monumental a task to ever be more than a dream. But Leonard had allowed himself to believe in one impossible dream already, and it had brought him here.

Perhaps, _perhaps_, if he could win this creature's sympathies they might some day have a chance.

"I came out here to tell you a story," Leonard told him quietly. "I came to tell you _her_ story."

The man fell still—unnaturally so, he was just as unmoving, as unbreathing, as _unsettling_ as seeing a corpse sitting upright. Yet as Leonard looked back up into those alarming red eyes without flinching he saw that strange posture relax out of him, and the ghost of a smirk slowly formed upon the man's lips.

"Alright, then," he said, slipping the sunglasses back onto his face.

He stood and held a hand out to Leonard expectantly.

"Alright. I'm listening."

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the promised sequel, clearly. That's still slated for NaNo. 
> 
> I honest to fuck thought this was going to be a much shorter fic when I planned it out, but it kind of snuck up out of nowhere. It largely happened out of a desire to establish which parts of Deacon's backstory are true in this 'verse, but in my mind Deacon is never going to tell anyone the complete and unvarnished truth about anything. So if I wanted to go into any detail about what his past was like, I needed to have someone else do it for him. And then spook_me rolled around and I figured I could probably make a nice little scary story out of it.
> 
> (At least that's what I was shooting for. Pre-Railroad Deacon is supposed to be a little terrifying.)


End file.
